Heir to the Empire Anniversary Hardcover

Summer Catalog Yields Some New Info about what's in store for the book...

The 20th anniversary edition of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel that jump-started two decades of Star Wars publishing--more than 2.3 million copies in print! This special edition is updated and annotated and contains a brand-new short story.

In 1991, at a time when there had been no new Star Wars novels in eight years and none at all continuing the story of the saga past the events of the original movie trilogy, a brand-new novel burst on the scene: Heir to the Empire, the first book of the Thrawn Trilogy, by Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn.

The cover boldly announced "The Saga Continues," and the novel, which was set five years after the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and introduced the wildly popular blue-skinned, red-eyed character known as Grand Admiral Thrawn, shot to the #1 spot on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list.

Now, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this publishing phenomenon, here is a special edition, annotated throughout by the author and including a brand-new, never-before-published short story featuring Grand Admiral Thrawn!

The Death Star: So Named Because Living On It Means Almost Certain Death.

EUCast (via EUCantina) talked wth Erich Schoeneweiss (editor of non-fiction Star Wars books at Del Rey) and he had this to say:

EUCast asked about the preliminary cover art shown for the 20th Anniversary Edition of Heir to the Empire. Erich says that the cover that appeared in the latest Random House catalog is not just a placeholder, but is the direction they’re going. He states that:

“To my knowledge it hasn’t been completely approved yet, but that’s definitely the direction that we want to go. I believe the plan is that that will be the jacket, and it will have sort of treatment, some sort of silver foil treatment on it. But then when you take the jacket off of it, underneath, (kind of similar to what we did with the Death Troopers hardcover) it will have the original book cover as the paper-over-board cover.”

Erich says that the new material being added to the book is “phenomenal.” He gave the first mention that Timothy Zahn will not be the only contributer for the annotations; Betsy Mitchell, the original editor of the book, and some of the folks at Lucasfilm will add notes as well.

I love that new look - printing the cover directly on the hardcover itself (when we're talking about the original cover art, or Death Troopers). I've always hated dust jackets, so I really like this trend.